#041 - How to use lean startup principles to start the world’s first VR cinema franchise, with Dimitri Nabatov of WeAreCinema, Switzerland
Release Date: 11/08/2017
#068 - Challenges of small manufacturers to organise their production and inventory, with Kristjan Vilosius of Katana, Estonia
The Hardware Entrepreneur
This episode’s guest is Kistjan Vilosius of , a startup from Estonia. Working at a small-, medium-sized company, or startup you have to wear many hats and it happens often that there are simply not enough people to wear those hats. You have limited resources. Highly efficient way of working is therefore extremely important. How many times did it happen that you spent unexpectedly high number of hours trying to fix some issues when using your software, for example plain old spreadsheets, especially when those spreadsheets are connected, which handle different aspects of your business? This...
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#067 - How to speed up your New Product Introduction - Production Line Tool, with Pete Staples of Blue Clover Devices, USA
The Hardware Entrepreneur
My podcast guest is Pete Staples, co-founder and president of Blue Clover Devices with locations in San Francisco, Hong Kong and of course, Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Hardware. This is an episode on some important aspects of production lines and its challenges. Without a production line you have no mass manufacturing so if you want to play in that field, it’s good to know about some current issues. Pete’s company is originally and even now an ODM company. In this episode he will talk about what they do as an ODM. You’ll also find out about typical waste in production lines and what...
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#066 - How to apply lean startup principles to hardware, with Ash Maurya of Leanstack, USA
The Hardware Entrepreneur
I have a very special guest, one of the pioneers of one of the most popular innovation frameworks these days: the lean startup framework. My guest is Ash Maurya, who along with Eric Ries, did some substantial work in this field, laying the foundations of this concept. You’ll learn in this episode why this idea is still important today, especially in hardware field after it was born around the last financial crisis. You’ll get to hear also what companies are using it, some tactics you can use to make it work for you and also how others use it so you can get inspired. Ash will describe some...
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#065 - How to care about sustainability to get rid of plastic bottles (and still make a profit), with Moritz Waldstein of Mitte, Germany
The Hardware Entrepreneur
My guest in this episode is Moritz Waldstein-Wartenberg of from Berlin, Germany. We all drink water, mostly, I guess. I drink it in my tea, usually Fennel Anis Cumin bio tea, I drink it many times per day. Or I consume water in its pure form. But is water really pure? If it’s not pure, for example tap water, which we drink many times in Europe, how do you make sure you have a high quality water at home without going to the supermarket, paying for it and without taking, then throwing out the plastic bottles? And if you get it in the supermarket, is that good enough water for us? Mitte...
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#064 - To transform or not to transform your hardware company to an all agile one next year, with Balint Horvath, Switzerland
The Hardware Entrepreneur
I’m back on this episode and you will hear about the continuation of the topic of the . What should you do once you know you have a problem worth solving and you validated what solution you should build with all the features? Should you just go ahead and develop the product based on the specs, the whole development potentially taking multiple years? What is some framework that’s being adopted by more and more organisations these days, such as by Tesla, Bosch, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Boeing, Saab Defense or also some of the smaller companies, startups? They realized you cannot keep developing...
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#063 - Your (hardware) product is not your product - think in terms of business models, with your host Balint Horvath, Switzerland
The Hardware Entrepreneur
This episode features me and I’ll talk about topics that are especially relevant for technical founders. Your product is not the product. Many of us in high tech entrepreneurship have a technical background, with years of academic training where we’ve been educated about how to build products, with all the technical skills needed for that. We know how to calculate many things, such as mechanical properties, we know how to create CAD drawings, and how to actually translate theory into practise by actually building stuff. But is entrepreneurship really about these technicalities,...
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#062 - How a hardware SaaS company wants to help you not get lost in your data during product development, with Michael Corr of Duro Labs, USA
The Hardware Entrepreneur
I had Michael Corr as guest, who is the co-founder and CEO of from LA, southern California. I already had a guest from LA in , Shaun Arora of , the hardware accelerator. Michael is also in a way supporting the hardware ecosystem, but he’s not from an accelerator. He’s helping hardware companies with their developments and he has a product for it. His product is at the interface between software and hardware. He’s been deep in hardware development, designing and manufacturing all kinds of hardware products for more than 15 years both in the US and outside. Hardware products he has...
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#061 - RERUN - How to avoid mistakes when building a team - lessons from mentoring 1200+ hardware entrepreneurs, with Alan Clayton of SOSV
The Hardware Entrepreneur
This is a rerun episode after one month of no publishing. As mentioned in the last episode, I changed the publishing frequency to monthly. Why am I doing now a re-release of a past episode? Perhaps you’ve seen the recent report by HAX, the hardware accelerator based in Shenzhen, China and in San Francisco: . In the report they mentioned the importance of a great team when building a company and immediately this past episode with Alan Clayton came up in my mind, who’s the person assessing hardware startup teams’ healths. Since this is a very important topic, I wanted to bring it in focus...
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#060 - Future global data connectivity without worrying about your costs, with Guy Zbarsky of Keepgo, Israel
The Hardware Entrepreneur
My guest is Guy Zbarsky, co-founder of Keepgo, a firm that has been in business for about a decade. Guy’s company is called Keepgo and this company name already suggests that they want you to keep going, everywhere you want to go to. Some of you know that well, I cannot live very long without traveling so their topic connected with me. I met their company via one of my trips at IoT Tech Expo in Amsterdam at the end of June this year. Their business operates in a fast-moving field, in telecom. This also means that Guy will share some interesting tips and stories, how they’ve been riding the...
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#059 - Where IoT/AI are heading to - impressions from IoT Tech Expo Europe, with Balint Horvath, Switzerland
The Hardware Entrepreneur
Recently I participated in in Amsterdam on 27-28 June. It was a fascinating event to feel the pulse of the industry, how things stand and where the industry is heading to. In this episode I want to bring you some of the highlights, essential take home messages. This event is one of the biggest ones of its kind in Europe with nearly 9000 attendees. It had a few sections, including AI, IoT, Blockchain. At least half of the exhibitors were related to blockchain. However, in this episode in order to have some focus, I’ll concentrate more on the former two fields. Enjoy this episode! Raw...
info_outlineDimitri Nabatov has been my guest recently, founder and CEO of a company called WeAreCinema.
In episode 36 we had VR topic and this time again we’re back to that topic on the show. His company, WeAreCinema has a new business model in the world of VR and his company is a nice example that in order to become successful with hardware products there are a number of ways of doing that, including theirs.
You can learn about VR, why it’s special in the entertainment or advertisement industries, how they validated their idea with very cheap hardware, and also how they managed to pre-sell their idea to customers, getting strong market validation without investing almost nothing. You can also learn how he started thinking about the scaling topic in his business at an early phase and this serves as the basis of his current business model. He also gives a challenge to you, innovators, a call for innovation.
Enjoy.
Show highlights can be seen below:
- What is the current development of the VR industry and what it has to do with a black and white TV? - [3:55]
- What makes WeAreCinema stand out in the buzz around VR? – [5:45]
- The motivation behind founding a company in the entertainment industry - [7:17]
- Previous experience that lead Dimitri to founding the company - [8:58]
- How can a very cheap device help you validate your idea? - [10:00]
- Key lessons from a VR startup venture - [12:15]
- The business model behind WeAreCinema and how their scale-up - [15:56]
- How can challenges provoke you to be creative in terms of cost effectiveness? - [18:20]
- How has WeAreCinema been able to avoid the issue with dizziness? - [22:52]
- Challenges in front of the team - [24:44]
- Mistakes the founders did while developing the company - [26:56]
- If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [29:38]
- Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [29:59]
- Dimitri’s cold habit – [30:54]
- Some cultural differences that Dimitri observed throughout his career – [32:25]
- What is the best way to reach Dimitri? – [33:28]